Sunjammer

But why fight a battle? If a company files a complaint, simply remove the associated media. Be open about it, make something like a button shortcut to request media removal. I don't think it would be that common if the snippets were short enough and of poor quality.

This is right off the top of my head, and i'm Norwegian, so i don't know US law very well, but i think it'd be a nice feature on the site for editors to be able to submit small clips of game soundtracks or sound effects that fall within fair use. As such, a game could have a dedicated soundtrack section. As opposed to simply saying "Game x is known for its excellent soundtrack" (which is a subjective statement), an article can offer examples and let the reader choose for themselves wether the statement rings true. For many games, particularly 8 bit titles, 20 seconds of audio can be more than enough.

Thoughts?

Every interview and article i\ve seen about this game has made me want to cry. I realize this is elitist, but every single time i read some 2K dude's exposition on what they're doing with this title, my brain is just screaming Who the hell are you? Not a single face or name i recognize. No history i can trace to anything good. It's pretty obvious that Bioshock was basically System Shock Gaiden, down to the dual antagonist/sometimes protagonist setup, the amnesia, the log storytelling, the plasmids and upgradable weapons. And i was excited about that MOSTLY because it was another 'shock made by the dudes that made the best one, namely Irrational.

So, 2K Marin, Who the hell are you to tell me this is going to be any good and not just a cash-in on a surprise hit? Where's your Ken Levine? "You play as a big daddy"? Big fucking whoop. Show me something to make me care, don't just stand on the shoulders of those that were before you and expect me to notice you because you're high up.

Man the Fawkes thing made me literally cry out in astonishment. It's like putting a locked box on the table, a crowbar next to it, and tell you you have to search the rest of the room for the key "just because".

If anything, i'm glad they fix THAT ridiculous episode

Obsidian's "questionable track record" is arguable, considering the dudes behind that place have one of the best CRPG track records you can dig up these days. Technically they've been uneven, but it's pretty common knowledge now that KOTOR2 was shoved out the door by the publisher, and for a published game it sure was an interesting and involved experience. NWN was a game that made me want to cry with disappointment (i was a huge Bioware fan up until that generic trainwreck), and NWN2 at least brought some spark of IDENTITY to the game, and a far more interesting story.

I'd like people to go out there and talk to Epic or Ubisoft or whoever really about how easy it is to make a solid RPG. Game dev is really freaking complicated stuff, and RPGs are among the hardest kinds of games to get right, not only technically but in terms of character, balance and planning. How many here felt that Gears of war 2 wrapped its story around the actions of the player, rather than ask the player to act out a part as it was intended to be acted. If you can nail the sense of real consequence and choice in a dynamic world, i can't care less about technical flaws.

Obsidian are among the few studios out there who truly know how this shit goes down. It's a wounded, flawed, cracked studio, like Troika was, but they're literally fighting an uphill battle. CRPGs are going the way of the graphical adventure game. They're few and far between, the audience is hardcore and demanding, and this kind of whiny ass bullshit over minutia isn't helping anyone.

Show some gratitude, support and excitement. It's a new Fallout game by some of the dudes that invented the franchise to begin with. Are you actually whining that it's TOO SOON or that they've published buggy games in the past? Wake the fuck up.

It's tempting to go "Chris Avellone you morons", but seemingly a whole ton of peeps out there have no idea what that even means. That's just fucking shameful.

What the fuck is up with some of these comments?! I'm honestly shocked! You'd think Obsidian shit on your lawn or something?
They're making a new god damn video game for people to enjoy. Do you NOT want them to make it? What the hell's kind of counterproductive spoiled brat attitude is that? VIDEO GAMES!

Sweet jesus, get your priorities straight. Calling Fallout 3 shovelware is unfathomable.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/09/04/

Take your medicine.

I really liked exploring the wasteland. For what it is, a bombed out wreck of nothing, i think they did a killer job. I liked just picking a direction and going as far as i could make it.

Otherwise, trolls can go back under the bridge where they belong. Chris Avellone is at Obsidian. That's all i need to know to be excited about him being involved in a new Fallout game. "Sell it back to interplay"? They basically just sold it back to Black Isle. Win.

Just a few things that have been bugging me...

1. Why is the framerate so low? It looks like it's at 12 still; surely you can push that up to 30 or 40? It's not like it's costing users cycles when it isn't in a transition (unless you update positions on ENTER_FRAME though I assume TweenLite or something like it?)

2. The text of items below the first is *always* obscured. Sometimes so much so i often have to scroll TO that item to be able to know what it's even about. I don't think this is a good idea. You can work around that pretty fast by dropping the alpha of the preceding item to .8 and i don't think anyone would cry foul. Regardless though, it's consistently annoying to me.

3. My instinct is that there is a queue of items, but there's no easy way to see how long the queue is. Since it's a looping queue, the chronology of items can be somewhat confusing once you start scrolling. I'd like some form of timestamp, or making it non-looping (which sucks, because a.push(a.shift()) is the world's most beautiful shorthand). I guess i'd just like to see where it begins and where it ends, if chronology is of any importance.

Anyways, just my $.2

I think the basic problem of the adventure game was replayability. Some games, in particular Fate of Atlantis, experimented with multiple paths and alternative solutions, but nothing could really overcome the fact that buying and playing a Lucasarts or Sierra style adventure game was like buying a short and shallow book with pretty pictures, and unless you really, really found things in there to love (characters, settings, whatever), long term appeal was going to be very limited.

The action-adventure paradigm shift was simply adding an element of chaos and unpredictability; dynamic combat, physics puzzles, or simply VARIABLES in general.

I personally miss adventure games greatly, but i also realize they are sort of a relic now in terms of the gameplay. It sucks to see use A with B go down the drain for the sake of bop A repeatedly on head with B, but there you have it. Characters and story is what i really thought classic adventures brought to the table, and we haven't really lost that, though we certainly have more violent solutions to problems now (which is a bit sad for a genre that used to be able to entertain for hours without a single casualty). I'm pretty sure adventures aren't "dead" so much as they were forced to embrace TIME as a factor into their mechanics. Before, we were okay with worlds that waited for you to make a move. Gamers today expect situations to evolve dynamically, and it's really bloody hard to do mechanics like that in terms of dialog and character interaction.

I thought Penumbra was a great compromise; exploration, physics puzzles, limited combat and thick atmosphere. I also thought Call of cthulhu Dark corners of the earth was a very good adventure in terms of the amount of time spent NOT shooting dudes and rather getting past environmental obstructions. There are developers playing with the format all the time, and i'm pretty sure we'll eventually get a good amalgam of hands-on storytelling and non-violent problem solving.

That said, i don't think you could do Grim Fandango in any other way than the one they did in the first place, and it's incredibly sad to think of that world as a place we'll likely never see anything like again.